


From Road to Road

by popsongnation



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsongnation/pseuds/popsongnation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the depositions, Mark can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Road to Road

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [TSN Secret Santa 2012](http://thesantanetwork.livejournal.com/). Beta'd by the incredible [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/adventuring/profile)[**adventuring**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/adventuring). Originally posted [here](http://thesantanetwork.livejournal.com/4620.html).

Mark has a headache.

That’s not really surprising seeing as he hasn’t slept in over thirty hours. It’s the second night of the depositions, and he hasn’t been able to fall asleep since he arrived in New York the previous evening.

He lies awake staring at the ceiling for three hours that night before he gives up and decides to drink himself to sleep. He goes downstairs to sit in the hotel’s bar instead of abusing the minibar because he feels like he’s going insane alone with his thoughts, without distractions. They are unbearably loud and don’t even make sense anymore, and why can’t he sleep? He’s never had any problems passing out before.

It takes fifteen minutes and two shots of vodka (which, admittedly, tastes terrible without Red Bull, but it’s not like he’s going to ingest any caffeine now), and then there’s a woman on the bar stool beside him. 

This is the last thing he wants right now. It seems to be written on his face, because she smiles, tired and wry.

“I’m not trying to get anything but spectacularly drunk tonight,” she says. It’s obviously a hook for conversation, which Mark hates, but then again, he came down here to escape his own head, so he bites.

“Lawsuit?” he asks, looking at her wrinkled pantsuit.

“Good guess.” She smiles. “Divorce. You, too, I assume?” And Mark is tired, and sick of explaining himself, and also glad she doesn’t know who he is. New York is good for that.

“How did you know?”

“You look,” she gestures with her whiskey glass, apparently searching for a word, and settles for, “terrible.”

“Thank you, you look great too,” Mark says.

“Marie.” She extends her hand, and Mark takes it.

“Mark.”

And then they drink. Turns out drinking to get drunk is more fun when you do it with someone else, even if you’re both miserable. Marie doesn’t cry or curse her husband (or wife, she never actually said), but she does tell the story of how her mother-in-law sent all the Christmas presents she received over the course of Marie’s marriage back one day, in original packaging with a note attached about how she "always knew that marriage was a mistake." Marie then sold them all on Ebay and bought the suit she’s wearing right now with the money.

“I’ll probably burn it when this is over. It’ll be cathartic.”

Mark laughs.

“What about you? Gonna burn something?”

He thinks about it. There are a couple of things he could burn, things Eduardo left in his possession. He still has his North Face jacket; sometimes he still wears it when it’s cold. Not that it’s cold often in California. “That was always more his thing,” he replies, without thinking.

“He burned your stuff?” Marie asks without skipping a beat.

“Smashed a laptop once.” She winces. “While I was using it,” he adds, for her benefit.

She laughs. It is kind of funny, out of context. He’s tired and drunk enough he almost believes his own story. Divorce. In his head, his faceless husband looks nothing like Eduardo, and he is tempted to make up some stories. Mark probably cheated. Or, no, Eduardo thought he was cheating, but Mark just worked too much. He probably wanted to adopt, and Mark hated children. Inconsolable differences. Right.

Mark doesn’t tell any more stories.

At half past three in the morning, they both decide they’ve had enough. “Just think,” Marie says as they walk out of the bar, supporting each other like they’re college students coming home from a party, “the worst is already behind us. It’ll be better now.”

Mark doesn’t think she wants him to answer, so he doesn’t.

They part at the elevators, Marie taking the one on the left and Mark the one on the right. Marie smiles and gives a tired wave, and then she’s gone. They won’t see each other again. They never exchanged last names. They won’t be Facebook friends. It’s good. You need people like this, Mark thinks. People you meet, talk to, and never see again. People you don’t have to be yourself with. Perfect strangers are rare in the world he’s created. He doesn’t know whether to be proud or sad.

Fuck, he really needs some sleep. His brain is getting ridiculous.

He passes out as soon as he’s horizontal, wakes up and empties his stomach into the toilet. Afterwards, he lies on top of his sheets for an hour, sweaty and gross, and can’t go back to sleep. He feels worse than before.

-

“Point-zero-three percent,”Eduardo says, and suddenly, Mark doesn’t feel anything. Not anger, not sadness, not that gnawing feeling of _wrong_ under his skin he can’t quite define.  
Just emptiness.

-

He sits in the conference room for an hour, refreshing Erica’s profile page every ten seconds until he’s woken from his trance by a light going out in the hallway, which makes the conference room considerably darker. He feels like a zombie as he gets up and leaves the building. He’ll have to talk to a specialist as soon as he gets home. He never slept much, but he’s never had any problems falling asleep either. He prided himself on being able to sleep when and wherever he wanted so he could spend his time one-hundred percent efficiently.

Chris has been saying his erratic sleeping habits would ruin his biorhythm for years, but Mark never thought this was what he’d meant.

He's still thinking about who to call about this and what Chris will say, how _smug_ he will be, when he hails a cab outside the building, mumbling a hotel address at the driver. Not that it really matters what Chris will say. You can die from lack of sleep. People go insane from this. (Mark already feels a bit insane. His thoughts are so loud.)

At least he has a lot of practice walking and talking on autopilot, even operating automatic swing doors. Seriously, swing doors: Mark swears whoever designed them got a sick satisfaction out of seeing people get smacked in the face. He enters the lobby, looking for elevators he swears were there yesterday.

And then there's Eduardo. Mark has no idea where he came from.

"This isn't your hotel," Eduardo says. Mark blinks, sluggish. That makes sense.

"Okay." He turns to go.

"Mark!" Eduardo shouts. Mark looks at him, confused. "Really?" He sounds angry again; Mark didn't realize he hadn't before. He also doesn't sound like he's talking to Mark, but Mark can't be sure.

"What? What do you want from me?" That didn't sound as collected as he meant it to. 

Eduardo's brow furrows. "You don't look good," he says. 

Mark doesn't know if he's supposed to answer that. It's kind of self-evident neither of them is having the time of his life right now. But he's sick of these games, sick of going in circles, sick of talking without a point. "I haven't slept since I got here," he offers. It’s not exactly smalltalk, if that’s what Eduardo wanted, but Mark doesn’t even know why they are talking at all.

It seems to be the wrong answer. Eduardo inhales sharply. "You're going to kill yourself one day," he says. "You are going to fall over, dead. And all because nothing, nothing is worth taking attention away from your important work, not even getting _sued by your best friend_."

Mark's headache is coming back full force, and he hates it. He hates everything. He hates Eduardo, and the Winklevii, and fucking New York. “Oh right, I forgot," he says. "I’m the moron not paying attention to your precious feelings of self-importance. That’s why you had to drag me here. So I’d have to listen to your crap without distractions. You can die happy now, because I’ve done nothing but that for the past three days. I haven’t slept or worked or done anything at all. I’ve been here, where you wanted me, and tomorrow you’ll get your money. You got your way. Congratulations.”

Eduardo looks at him with that wide-eyed expression Mark hasn’t seen in a long time. Insulted and amazed, Mark used to call it, but it’s darker than that, now. “Wait, you haven’t been able to sleep since Monday?”

“Isn’t that what I just said? Were you this stupid when we were friends or did I just not notice?”

“Mark.”

Mark breathes out. “I’m going back to my hotel now if you don’t mind.” He has already started walking again.

“No, wait.” Eduardo’s voice is quiet. Mark thinks about ignoring him, but it’s not like he’s got anything better to do. Like sleep.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“I think we should talk—”

“We’ve done nothing but talk.”

“—somewhere that’s not here. My room is upstairs,” Eduardo carries on, like Mark hadn’t spoken at all. He’d be angry, but it feels like all his energy has left him.

“Fine,” he says, and follows Eduardo out of the lobby and into an elevator. They don’t talk, and Mark contemplates the idea that maybe he’s not awake at all. Maybe he got hit by a truck on the way to the airport and this is his coma dream. It’d make as much sense as reality currently does.

Eduardo unlocks the door to his room and pulls Mark inside, and Mark is momentarily distracted by the fact that Eduardo is touching him. Eduardo hasn’t touched him in a long time. Eduardo sits down on the only chair, so he sits on the bed. If Eduardo has a problem, he can say so.

Then again, Mark has no idea what Eduardo is thinking at all.

“Why are we here?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you. Alone.” That sounds ominous.

“Sounds ominous,” Mark says.

Eduardo lifts an eyebrow. “How long have you not slept, now?”

Mark does the math. It takes him longer than it should, probably. “Fifty-seven hours. I fell asleep for two last night, so I’m not counting those.” Eduardo stares. “I got drunk. It didn’t really help," he explains.

“How long has this been going on?” Eduardo asks.

“Monday. I already said.”

“So, since you got here.”

“Yes.”

Eduardo sighs. Mark is silent. “When I saw you downstairs I thought you wanted to tell me something,” Eduardo says, after a moment.

“Tell you what?”

“That you’re sorry.”

“You want me to tell you I’m sorry?” he asks.

“I want you to be sorry,” Eduardo says, and yeah.

“Obviously.”

“What do you mean?” Eduardo demands. Mark thought he was sick of fighting, but this is good. Better than burning stuff, anyway.

“This whole thing,” Mark says, gesturing, “is it going how you imagined? You wanted to make me sorry. Is it satisfying?”

“I didn’t want to make you sorry.” Eduardo says. Mark scoffs. “Well, okay, maybe I did.” He pauses. “And, no, it isn’t.”

“I think I’m sorry,” Mark says.

“You think?” Eduardo asks, incredulous.

“I can’t really be sure right now,” he explains. “I might be going insane. Sleep deprivation does that.”

“Well, what do you think you’re sorry for?” Eduardo sounds exasperated, or like he’s talking to a small child, or both. Mark had forgotten how much he hated that tone.

Mark’s head hurts. He’s in that dangerous place between caring a lot and not caring at all about what he says. “That I wanted to hurt you. I was angry and I thought it’d be easier. That you’d care more than me.”

Eduardo exhales. It sounds raw. There’s something in his eyes Mark can’t identify. “I’m sorry I froze the account.”

“Good,” Mark says.

“That’s it? _Good_?”

“I wasn’t trying for moral high ground, unlike you,” Mark says. He got what he wanted years ago. What he’d thought he wanted, anyway. Eduardo snorts his “that’s-so-you“ snort. Mark hasn’t heard that one in a long time either. He thinks he missed it.

Neither of them speaks for a while. To be honest, Mark is waiting for Eduardo to work up the nerve to kick him out. Instead, he asks: “Are you hungry?” 

Mark isn’t really, but he also knows he probably should be. Not sleeping always ruins his appetite, and he’s gotten used to forcing himself to eat even if he doesn’t feel like it, so he nods. Eduardo calls room service without asking him what he wants, which is okay. Mark couldn’t tell him anyway, and Eduardo probably remembers that. Or he doesn’t care, which is fine too. 

He sits next to Mark on the bed and turns on the TV, and they eat to the backdrop of some reality show. Save for a few remarks about the blatantly stupid people on the screen, they don’t talk. That’s what reality TV is for, Mark thinks, giving people who have nothing to say to each other an easy way to fill the silence.

When the food is gone, Mark thinks he should probably leave, but they are both curled up on the bed by then, empty dishes between them, and Mark is full and warm and doesn’t have the energy for awkward goodbyes. Eduardo will kick him out. It’s his room; he invited Mark here, so it’s not Mark’s responsibility.

He closes his eyes, and a minute later, he’s fast asleep.

-

They wake up together to the alarm of Eduardo’s phone. Mark rubs at his eyes, trying to open them. Waking up is a lot like Mark imagines getting run over by a truck to be, but he still feels better than the day before. Less fragile and jittery, less likely to lose his mind any minute. His brain feels like mush, though, so he thinks it’s good the most difficult thing he’ll do today is sign his name.

They don’t talk. Mark supposes Eduardo doesn’t know what to say. Mark is still working off the whole “not his responsibility” assumption, since he wasn’t the one who decided sleeping next to the person he’s currently suing was a great idea. Mark just fell asleep. He hadn’t slept in days. He really wasn’t to blame.

They share a coffee pot, and then a cab. If their lawyers look weirdly at them, Mark doesn’t pay enough attention to notice.

There are a lot of papers to sign. Mark stays long after Eduardo has left because he has to deal with the Winklevii’s papers too. He only realizes once it’s too late that he didn’t even say goodbye.

But when Mark exits the building (swing doors, no surprise there), Eduardo is waiting for him right outside . “I never gave you my new phone number,” he explains, eyes darting from Mark’s face to the street and back nervously. But he stayed, so he must be sure Mark wants his phone number. Mark is only mildly surprised to find he does.

“I would have Facebooked you,” he says.

Eduardo’s mouth twitches. He says, “Just call.” 

On the flight back to California, Mark sleeps like a baby.


End file.
